China is no stranger to drought, having experienced severe water shortages hundreds of times during the past two millennia. Despite the country's long experience with drought, however, it is ill-prepared to cope with the current dry spell, one of the worst in decades.
The drought itself, which is affecting even tropical southern regions, is a climactic phenomenon. But its effects are being exacerbated by poor infrastructure, a lack of comprehensive relief plans, river diversion, and increasing water demand from an expanding population and growing industrial economy. Public awareness of the scope of the problem is also low.
Residents around Poyang Lake in eastern China's Jiangxi Province were astonished in early December to see the country's largest freshwater lake almost literally drying up before their eyes.
The lake, which covered an area of 300-500 square kilometers last winter, has shrunk to less than 50 sq km, the smallest since hydrological records began to be kept. More than 100,000 residents of the Poyang region are suffering drinking water shortages.
"I have not seen such a severe drought since I was born," said one 60-year-old, whose family lived by the lake for generations.
China has long suffered frequent droughts. Official records show that from 206 B.C. to 1949 A.D., the country had 1,056 droughts, or one every two years, on average. But a worrisome phenomenon has been observed over the past few years. In addition to the northern and northwestern regions that are accustomed to droughts, the northeast and areas south of the Yangtze River, which historically had abundant precipitation, recorded dry weather more frequently.
Earlier this year, Hainan, a rainy island province in southernmost China, saw around 100 reservoirs and ponds drying up. Meanwhile, in the southwest, Sichuan, called the "province of one thousand rivers", and Chongqing, a municipality called the "city of rivers", were stricken by drought all last year, an unprecedented situation over the past century.
"In recent years, all 31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities on the Chinese mainland suffered droughts, with no exception," said Zhang Jiatuan with the office of the State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters.
Zhang said that, since the 1990s, China has had frequent droughts -- one about every three years -- and they tended to linger. In the north, drought has persisted for 14 years, a duration rarely seen since 1949.
Zhang said in the 1950s, China annually lost 4.35 billion kilograms of grain to drought, or 2.5 percent of the annual total yield. But during the 1990s, agricultural losses increased sharply, to an annual figure of 20.9 billion kg, or 4.4 percent of the total yield. Since 2000, the situation has worsened further, with annual losses of about 37 billion kg, or more than 7 percent of the total.
This year, 39.93 million hectares of crops were affected by drought, with 349,267 ha yielding no grain at all, and 37.36 billion kg of grain were lost, according to Zhang.
In addition to grain production, water supplies for all sorts of uses are threatened by a dry climate, especially with supplies under growing pressure from a larger population and an expanding industrial sector.
Although the government has spent scores of billions of yuan on water projects each year since 2000, there are still 30 million rural dwellers who are short of drinking water. Another 20 million people in the cities face some kind of drinking-water shortages every year as well.
In some drought-stricken areas -- for instance, the remote northwestern region of Ningxia -- people spend much of their time searching for water, and some have to go as far as 50 km from home to secure supplies.
In the more-developed Guangdong Province, in southern China, about 250,000 people have experienced shortages of drinking water following a two-month dry spell during the latter part of this year.
Zhang said industry had actually been harder hit by the drought than the agricultural sector.
"Since the 1990s, China annually has lost some 300 billion yuan, or 1.1 percent of its GDP on average, from droughts. The percentage even reached 2.5 percent to 3.5 percent during severe droughts."
Since fall, the Beijiang River in northern Guangdong has fallen to its lowest level in a century, with its width narrowing from 1,000 meters to 200 meters. Irrigation and shipping facilities were affected, particularly coal and cement transport, which usually peaks in winter.
Worse, ecological systems have been degraded. The Lijiang River in Guangxi and Crescent Spring in Gansu, famous for their lush scenery, have shrunk, and part of the former body has dried up.
Global warming is being blamed for more frequent droughts, not only in China, but also in central Asia, Europe, Africa and Australia. But aside from natural factors, drought relief work in China is also challenged by some man-made problems.
One is a deficiency of infrastructure. Only 55.3 million ha out of the 1.23 billion ha of farmland nationwide has irrigation equipment.
Another problem is the dam system. Yang Yunxian, the head of the local flood control and drought relief office of Hainan, said the province had many reservoirs at risk, which were prone to dam collapses during rainy seasons. Water levels had to be kept low to guard against this risk, and thus water couldn't be stored for dry seasons, Yang said.
Other problems with drought relief include poor emergency response, which stems from a lack of spare water resources, drilling of wells and irrigation equipment, and insufficient funds.
The central government has earmarked only 730 million yuan for drought relief, although that was the most over the past few years. Two-thirds of provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities have not allocated any funds for drought relief in their latest annual budgets, according to the State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters.
Although China is among the nations that regularly experience the most serious droughts and incur the heaviest economic losses, it has failed to develop a comprehensive drought-relief plan.
"Quite a few regions only have short-term arrangements for drought relief, and some resulted in overlapping construction projects and waste of money," Zhang Jiatuan said.
Developing water resources in an ad hoc manner has also been a disaster for many rivers. Unplanned water diversion, for example, caused downstream sections of the Yellow River to dry up in 1997, according to Zhang.
"Water resources should be managed and distributed in a unified way," he said.
And finally, the public has yet to become broadly aware of the lack of water resources, Zhang stressed.
(Xinhua News Agency December 21, 2007)
